


The Heart is a Wilderness

by Saucery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hackers, Assassins & Hitmen, Canon-Typical Violence, Consent Issues, Danger, Dark, Derek In Heat, Drama, Dubious Consent, Hacker Stiles Stilinski, Hacking, Imprinting, Knotting, Loss of Control, Lust, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mercenaries, Non-Canonical Age Difference, On the Run, POV Derek Hale, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Road Trips, Romance, Sassy Stiles Stilinski, Scent Kink, Scent Marking, Scents & Smells, Sexual Fantasy, Stalker Derek Hale, Stalking, Strength Kink, Supernatural Elements, Suspense, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Sex, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 13:44:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3852934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Stiles is a whistleblower à la Edward Snowden, in hiding from a government that wants him dead, and Derek is the werewolf mercenary sent to kill him.</p><p>Unexpectedly, Derek imprints on Stiles and claims Stiles as his mate. What follows is a romance on the run, as Derek takes Stiles and flees across the country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart is a Wilderness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [auroreanrave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/gifts).



> The title is from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CapQQn0UixY) by The Slip.
> 
> Please be warned that this story contains dubious consent. If that isn’t your cup of tea, I advise you not to read ahead.

* * *

 

The target was sixteen feet to the north-west and four stories down, moving back and forth, as if pacing. Perhaps he sensed that his death was approaching. Perhaps he didn’t.

Derek crouched on the edge of the rooftop, poised to leap, his claws leaving deep gauges in the eaves when he jumped. He landed soundlessly on the sturdy, concrete-encased drainage pipe jutting out of the side of the building, and from there, he climbed onto the target’s balcony. Derek slid a talon along the latch, unlocking it, and the glass door swung open silently.

The apartment lacked a security system, but then, Derek _had_ infiltrated several security systems surrounding the building and the block, as a whole. The target may have grown complacent after evading capture for nearly two years, and may consider a third security system superfluous.

The target—Genim “Stiles” Stilinski, inveterate hacker and foolhardy whistleblower—wasn’t in the lounge, which was peppered with what appeared to be an eclectic mixture of gaming consoles, DVDs, deconstructed appliances and denuded circuitboards, whose wiring gleamed dully in the darkness. There was a disconcerting scent all over everything, especially on the musty old couch—a scent that raised goosebumps on Derek’s arms, starting an itch at the roots of his fangs.

He yearned to _bite_ , more than was usual before a kill, and it wasn’t… the customary hunger. This was akin to what he felt during his heats, an urge to mark rather than destroy.

Derek paused, because he had been a freelance mercenary long enough to know that any change in his carefully-modulated behavior was a source of concern. There had to be an element of this environment that was setting him off. He had to puzzle out what it was, or he could be rendering himself unacceptably susceptible to it, and ultimately unfit to complete the mission.

He focused, gathering intelligence through his senses, as his pack had trained him to.

The tapping of a keyboard was audible from the bedroom, a room that buzzed with the electricity of what were likely a series of supercomputers. There was also the beating of a heart, steady as a metronome, accompanied by calm, regular breathing and the muted, rhythmic noise of music through what must be a pair of headphones. The body in that room was no longer pacing, and was sitting, its shape more palpable than it should’ve been, oddly _touchable_ , and a scent that was—that was—

Derek staggered, his vision going red, then black, before clearing. Shocked, he saw himself fall to his knees, his claws slicing into the mangy carpet as he tried to steady himself, as he tried to distribute his weight across the floorboards to prevent them from creaking. Eventually, he made it to his feet, his vision tunneling, until all he could see was the entrance to the bedroom, emanating that damnable scent.

Wolfsbane? No. It couldn’t be. Wolfsbane was a paralytic, whereas this was dangerously enervating. Maddening. It was pushing Derek to shift, to transform, like a full moon, but the full moon was three weeks away.

Irrelevant. Derek would get the answer out of the target, before killing him. He could delay his job no further. Unsteadily, he made his way to the unlit bedroom, doing his best to be quiet, and he must have succeeded, because Stilinski still had his back turned, the glow of the computer screen in front of him washing past him and casting Derek conveniently into shadow. All Derek could see from behind Stilinski was his buzzcut, his strangely delicate ears, and a nape that was frustratingly unbitten.

Derek attacked.

Stilinski barely had the chance to scream before Derek had his hand wrapped around Stilinski’s neck, squeezing until his claws drew blood, with Stilinski hanging from his grip like a rag doll.

“Wh—Ouch—”

“What is it.”

“Oh, god, you’re a were. Is that how you broke the security perimeter? Jesus fucking Christ, I—”

“What. Is it.” Derek’s vision kept switching to red and back, disorienting him, and the smell of Stilinski’s blood was making him angry, feral, as if he had to hunt down whoever was hurting Stilinski and—

 _He_ was the one hurting Stilinski.

Derek shook his head. His ears were ringing with the pounding of Stilinski’s pulse. It was deafening.

“Uh…” Stilinski gawped at him, eyes wide and fear-dark. “Are you okay? Which is a bizarre question to be asking my would-be assassin, but I’d prefer you were sober before you killed me, because I’d like it to be quick, not clumsy. And you look… kind of like you’re high? The bad sort of high.”

“I don’t. What did. Do you have any anti-were herbs. Or spells. Or.”

“Er, no? I don’t think so? Listen, man, I thought you guys were, like, almost extinct, and I figured those rumors of the CIA hiring pet werewolves were urban myths intended to scare off silly hackers like me, and… I wouldn’t exactly have known how to ward against you, anyway. Werewolf lore isn’t in the public domain, since the government is keeping it classified. Which… Hm. I’ll hack that, tomorrow. If you don’t kill me, today.”

Derek lifted Stilinski farther into the air, air that was becoming increasingly difficult to inhale, thickening and cloying with Stilinski’s scent.

“And you’re strong enough to lift me off the _ground_. Whoa. Why don’t you do me a favor and just snap my spine, already? Because you might’ve dodged the alarms I’d rigged around this neighborhood, on account of being supernaturally fast, but you can’t crack the encryption on my computers. Nobody can. Genius-level intellect, remember? And the data will self-destruct if I’m injured, so you can’t torture me for the decoding algorithm.”

“How. How did you configure that.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Stilinski winced as Derek’s grasp tightened, then loosened. A single drop of blood trickled down to Stilinski’s Adam’s apple, which bobbed nervously.

The kid was terrified of dying. Like everyone was. There was nothing unique about this target, except that he wasn’t begging for mercy. He’d probably been waiting to be killed, all this time, stealing dangerous and damning information from the government and disseminating it to respected news outlets and websites like WikiLeaks before he was assassinated. A martyr. A stupid, idealistic, childish martyr. The type of self-sacrificing idiot Derek would never understand, or bother to understand.

Fools like this deserved to die. They practically invited it. Like Stilinski was inviting _him_ , going still, Stilinski’s heartbeat perversely slowing again, as though he was making peace with how this would end, for him. Except that Derek’s biology was interpreting that invitation not as an invitation to kill, but an invitation to fuck. Stilinski’s stillness was calming him, but it was exciting him in equal measure.

Sweat was breaking out all over Derek, and he wanted to haul Stilinski close, wanted to lap at the shallow punctures above his collarbones until they healed, wanted to tear open that flimsy Counting Crows T-shirt and lick the remainder of Stilinski, too, just to _taste_ —

This was… This was what his mother had told him about, before she’d been eliminated by a rival syndicate. It had to be. Through the feverish blaze consuming his reason, Derek scarcely had the presence of mind to piece the clues together, but when he did, they all added up to one thing, and one thing only.

Imprinting.

He’d imprinted on Stilinski.

A human. A human was his mate?

No. The pressing issue was that a _target_ was his mate. Given that Derek couldn’t tolerate Stilinski bleeding even as much as he was, killing him was inconceivable. Not killing him would mean violating Derek’s contract with the CIA, however, and that would be as good as signing his own death warrant. And the kid’s. 

How old had Stilinski’s file said he was? Twenty? More than a decade younger than Derek. Young enough to be going to college and getting drunk off beer-pong and discovering just what love and heartbreak were all about.

Young enough to be ready to screw at the drop of a hat. Young enough to get hard again and again, no matter how roughly or how often he was fucked. Young enough to be untutored in what ecstasy truly meant. Young enough to be utterly _shattered_ by the size of Derek’s knot—

Derek growled.

Stilinski meeped. There was no other word for it. “Are you supposed to be looking at me like that? I’m not sure if I feel like a fresh cut of meat or a… really sexy fresh cut of meat. What?”

Derek set Stilinski down. As gently as he was able.

Stilinski stumbled backward, and into a faintly beeping central processing tower. A tower Derek cornered him against, and slipped his palms up and under Stilinski’s shirt, along the impossible smoothness of Stilinski’s skin, punctuated by the small, stiff points of his nipples.

Stilinski jolted, grabbing at Derek’s wrists. “Wh-what are you—are you planning to molest me before killing me? What kinda sicko are you?”

Derek halted. And blinked. “I need to get you out of here,” he slurred, sounding for all the world as if he were drunk. There was a cottony, comfortable blanket settling over his awareness at having direct contact with Stilinski, and the idea of letting go was intolerable, but, he argued with himself, necessary.

“Out of here and into a coffin? Yeah, I got that part.”

“No. Out of. Away from. Others like me.”

It was Stilinski’s—Stiles’s—turn to blink at him. “Um,” said Stiles. “I’ve been locked up in this place for ages, with no social interaction, so I’m not that great at reading signals, but your signals are totally mixed, dude. You were on the brink of slashing me into ribbons, before, but now… Now, it’s like I’m wrapped _up_ in ribbons, and you can’t wait to untie ’em. You’ve got those crazy eyes that druggies have, when they spot their fix. Am I the werewolf equivalent of catnip, or something?”

“Or something,” Derek muttered, and hefted Stiles by the waist, slinging him over a shoulder as Stiles yelped in protest. Derek had to concentrate, despite his rising urge to strip Stiles naked and see whether Stiles’s self-imposed captivity had made him as pale as moonstone, and whether the intricate whorls of Stiles’s ears and the sensitive arches of his feet were as starved for touch as the rest of him.

Because Stiles _was_ starved—Derek could feel it, running like electricity beneath his own starvation, calling to it, like to like. Derek had no doubt that they could feed each other, sate each other, as soon as he got Stiles away from this no-longer-hidden location and halfway across America, to a seedy motel in a random town in the midwest, a motel with a rickety, filthy bed that would groan with every movement and rattle with every thrust—

Concentrate.

“Hello? Mister Caveman? Cavewolf? Can you hear me? Where are you taking m—oh, hell, no, you aren’t going to dive off my balcony while clutching me like your favorite blankie, are you insane? Fu—”

Stiles shrieked, or would have, had Derek not clapped a hand over his mouth as he thudded onto the hood of an ancient Pontiac parked on the curb below, denting it. 

“Oh my god, oh my god,” Stiles wheezed, when Derek rolled off the hood and let his leather boots take them down a series of interlocking alleys, loping easily toward the abandoned tenement where his car was parked. “I’m being kidnapped by a pervy werewolf.”

“I’m not kidnapping you. I’m saving you.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Because from where I’m standing—or dangling, crap, you’re carrying me I’m like a sack of bones you’re going to grind in your bone-grinding mill—you’re just a contract killer that likes playing with his food.”

“I don’t eat humans.”

“You don’t? Thanks for the reassurance. You do rip them into bloody strips, though, don’t you?”

“Not you.”

“Not me.” Stiles laughed, shakily, as Derek reached his Camaro, unlocked it, and deposited Stiles on the passenger-side seat, strapping him in with the seatbelt. “And you’re buckling my seatbelt like a protective Mama Bear would do for her cub. Care to explain why?”

“You’re my mate.”

“Your _what_?”

Derek got into the driver’s side, inserted the key in the ignition, and took off. “My. Mate.”

“Ha ha,” Stiles said, weakly, “funny joke,” and when Derek said nothing for an entire ten seconds, “ _seriously_?”

“Seriously.”

“So that weird routine you just pulled was you imprinting on me? I’ve heard about that, but, shit, this has gotta be a prank, or the worst honey trap in history. Since I’m out of the range of my data, it’s erased itself, so I ain’t worried about that, but… I do have an awful lot of very, very valuable stuff in my brain. If this is an elaborate ploy to seduce my secrets out of me, it’s not gonna work. You might be disturbingly attractive for a Grim Reaper, but I’m not falling for a lie that obvious.”

“It’s not a lie.” Derek swerved to the left, and the right, mirroring his mental map of Manhattan as he sped toward the interstate highway leading to New Jersey. “My sole intention is to mate with you.”

“First of all, do you have to drive like a maniac? Secondly, I don’t recall consenting to _mating_ with you. Or even having a coffee with you. Or being in this car with you.”

“It is for your safety. I am escorting you to my family’s ancestral home, which is not on the CIA’s grid, or any other grid. It will be a road trip that’ll last a week. My goal is to keep you alive and undetected until you are in defensible territory. My territory. We only have a head start of approximately twenty-four hours. If we don’t hurry, my… employers will send bloodhounds after us, assuming that I failed in my mission or that I deliberately abducted you, hoping to sell you to the highest bidder.”

“The Russians and the Iranians _would_ cream their pants at the opportunity to acquire me.” Stiles fidgeted. “How do I know that’s not what you’re aiming for?”

“You’ll know, when I don’t give you to anyone.” Derek clenched his jaw against the urge to sprout fangs. “You’re _mine_.”

“Joy,” Stiles mumbled, peering out of the windshield at the midnight traffic, which gradually increased as they neared the center of the city. “If you’re lying, I’m in trouble, and if you’re not lying, I’m… in trouble.”

“I will treat you well.”

“As well as you _can_ , you mean. You didn’t seem like you had an awful lot of control, back in my apartment.”

“That was because I hadn’t realized that I’d imprinted on you. Realizing helps.”

“Not much, I guess? ’Cause, I dunno if you’ve noticed, but your claws are still out. You’re damaging the padding on your steering wheel.”

“I’ll be fine,” Derek gritted out. “Give me a couple of minutes.”

Stiles huffed. He still stank of fear, but it was fading, replaced by the tiredness that generally followed trauma. Stiles was traumatized. Traumatized as a result of Derek’s actions. That was—

That was unbearable. Derek was going to sneak Stiles across the border to New Jersey, where he’d stop to get Stiles fed, bathed and rested. After that, they’d be off to Pennsylvania, and then Ohio.

A part of Derek despised this unfamiliar vulnerability in himself, this potential flaw, because he wasn’t used to having a companion, let alone a fragile, infuriating human who talked too much. If it wasn’t for the imprinting, Derek would’ve killed Stiles without hesitation, collected his pay, and moved onto the next assignment. If it wasn’t for this desperate _thirst_ for another, a thirst unlike anything he’d ever experienced, Derek’s life would have continued as comfortably as it always had, without the unwelcome complication of a mate. He wouldn’t have had his composure ruined, like this, wouldn’t have had his professional reputation and his cool, hard-won objectivity stolen from him, wouldn’t have had his mastery of his inner wolf challenged so fundamentally.

Stiles had complained about not having consented to this, but _Derek_ hadn’t consented to it, either. It was as much of an invasion, for Derek, as much of an imposition, for all that it promised him ultimate bliss, ultimate pleasure. He was powerless to resist that promise, and that made him hate it, a little.

Derek resented Stiles, resented this responsibility that fate that seen fit to burden him with. Derek didn’t like Stiles; he didn’t even know Stiles. The boy was a stranger, a collection of statistics from a file, instead of a person.

But Derek couldn’t stopper this deepening craving, even if it was for a stranger. He couldn’t endure the concept of Stiles being gone, of the seat beside Derek’s being as empty as it had always been, just him and his car, going from city to city, mission to mission, target to target. After this debacle was dealt with and their trail had gone cold, Derek might return to selling his particular skill-set under a different alias, in a distant country where he and Stiles could subsist in relative freedom.

Derek now had a purpose that warmed him as much as it angered him, and maybe some of that warmth _was_ his anger, or maybe it was simple lust. Regardless, Derek was as incapable of abandoning Stiles as he was of leaving his own organs by the side of the road. No, Stiles was his to defend and his to claim, and as Stiles was Derek’s mate, he would eventually succumb to the bond, and to his natural desires. Even humans could not fight destiny. Derek’s father had succumbed to his mother, in just that fashion, and they had been happy.

Hadn’t they?

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates and sneak previews? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)!


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